Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Rhett swung into the parking lot of Fiona’s apartment complex too fast, the truck fishtailing before the tires caught. It stopped crooked across two spaces, the front bumper kissing the snowbank.
The drive over had been harrowing, nerve-wracking, but somehow he made it in one piece.
He left the engine running and bolted out, boots skidding on the ice. The cold was enough to steal his breath, but he didn’t slow. He crossed the walk and took the stairs two at a time, his boots ringing against the metal treads.
At the door, he knocked once. Waited. No answer.
He knocked again, harder.
Still nothing.
“Fiona?”
Silence pressed back.
He tried the knob. Locked.
A thin pulse of panic moved through him. She wouldn’t ignore him. Not if she was inside.
He stepped back and glanced toward the narrow window beside the stoop. Light glowed through the blinds, soft, shifting color. The Christmas tree.
The sight froze him.
Fiona never wasted electricity. She unplugged lamps before bed, checked outlets twice, scolded Jamie for leaving the hall light on.
The tree still burning at this hour didn’t make sense.
He cupped his hands to the glass and peered through the crack where the curtain didn’t meet. Red, green, and white lights blinked over empty furniture.
His pulse quickened.
He stepped back from the window, chest tight.
“Fiona,” he said again, louder this time.
No answer.
He didn’t think about what came next; he just moved. He hit the door with his shoulder. The frame held. Pain blasted down his arm. He stepped back and hit it again, harder, putting his full weight behind it. The lock snapped with a metallic crack, and the door swung inward.
“Fiona!”
His voice filled the apartment and died against the walls.
Light from the tree pulsed over everything. The couch, the living room, the small pile of toys by the door.
He crossed the room, boots leaving wet tracks on the floor. “Jamie!”
Nothing.
Her phone sat on the counter, screen black. He picked it up. Cold. Dead. Fiona never let it die; she lived by the thing, carried it everywhere, checked it often. He set it down, as if it might break under his fingers.
The silence pressed heavier.
He checked the bedroom. The bed was unmade, her coat draped over a chair. Slippers on the floor where she stepped out of them. No one there.
Then Jamie’s room.
The door stood half-open. He pushed it wider, heart thudding so hard it made his vision pulse. The dinosaur nightlight against the wall cast long shadows that seemed to reach for him. The bed was empty, sheets twisted into ropes. One pillow lay on the floor.
His gaze caught on the stuffed giraffe near the dresser, the green one the boy carried everywhere, the one that went to school, to therapy, to the ranch.
Jamie never went anywhere without it.
Rhett crouched, picked it up, turned it in his hand. “Where are you, son?”
He turned in a slow circle, pulse hammering so hard it blurred the sounds around him. He scanned every corner again, desperate for anything that explained where they went. A note. A sign. Something that made sense.
Then he saw it.
The Christmas card.
He froze, staring.
Light shimmered across the painted surface, not bright but pulsing like embers in a dying fire.
He reached for it with both hands, fingertips trembling. The edges were warm. Heat radiated from it, seeping into his palms.
The painting inside changed.
Where once it showed only him before a snow-covered fence, two new figures stood beside his image. A woman in a nightgown, his old coat hanging loose on her shoulders, and a small boy with his hand tucked in hers.
Fiona. Jamie.
The sight knocked the air from his lungs.
He traced the edge of the card, afraid to breathe, afraid to blink, afraid the image might shift again and take them even further from his reach.
Snow drifted across the painted scene, swirling around them as if stirred by wind he couldn’t feel. Fiona’s head turned slightly toward him. The boy peered up at her, a small smile fixed in place, trusting and unafraid.
The top. Jamie clutched the wooden top in his free hand.
Rhett’s throat tightened. His mind rejected what his eyes showed him, but the truth pressed closer with every heartbeat.
They were there.
In 1878. Whisked there by the Christmas card.
The light pulsed again, gold spreading across his palms, brightening the room until the blinking tree dimmed beside it. The glow bled through the paper, flickering against his skin, warm and urgent and fading.
He stared, unable to look away.
Fiona’s painted fingers tightened around Jamie’s. The illusion of breath. Of motion. Of life continuing in a world he couldn’t touch.
His hands started to shake. The card trembled between his fingers, the warmth already fading, the glow dimming with each passing second.
Understanding hit hard enough to leave him breathless.
The card hadn’t stopped working.
It opened again.
And Fiona and Jamie went through.
Rhett stayed on the floor, the card clutched between his hands. “Fiona. Jamie.”
Nothing answered. Not the card. Not the apartment. Not the world that swallowed them whole.
The apartment pressed around him, now feeling sterile and empty. No scent of Fiona’s shampoo. No Jamie counting. No warmth left anywhere except the fading heat from the card in his hands and his own ragged breathing.
They vanished.
The one miracle in his life, ripped away before he could reach it.
His hands shook. He forced them still, pressed the card flat between his palms. There had to be a reason. An explanation. Something he missed.
He studied the painted image. The rough fence. The mountains. The winter landscape stretching empty behind him.
Fiona and Jamie stood there just minutes ago. He saw them in the picture. Two figures rendered in paint and magic, real enough to touch.
Now—
His breath caught.
Their outlines were blurring.
He watched, unable to look away, as the shapes that were Fiona and Jamie faded. The woman’s nightgown bled into the snow. The boy’s fair hair dissolved into winter light. Their forms softened, turned translucent.
Only he remained. “No.”
The word came out flat. Final. He stared at the card, at the space where they’d been, and something in his chest shattered.
This was a second death.
Losing them in the card after he already lost them in 2025.
The emptiness dragged him backward through time. Away from this bright apartment with its electric lights and smooth floors. Back to his home in Choteau, lit by a single lantern, where shadows pooled in corners and the air smelled of sickness.
Clara propped on a pillow, face gray and thin, her breathing shallow. Matthew asleep beside her, small body curled tight, fever-flushed and whimpering even in sleep.
“Pray with me, Rhett.”
Her voice had been so soft he almost missed it. He was checking the fire, feeding it another log, doing something practical because he couldn’t stand the helplessness of sitting still.
He turned. “You need rest.”
“I need you.” She lifted one hand, the movement costing her. “Please.”
He crossed to her, sat on the edge of the bed. But when she reached for his hand, tried to bow her head, he pulled away.
“Save your strength.”
She looked at him then, really looked, and something passed through her expression. Not anger. Not even disappointment. Just a deep, quiet sadness, as if she knew it was all he could give.
She closed her eyes. “All right,” she whispered. “All right.”
He sat there, rigid, listening to her breathe. Each inhale rattled. Each exhale took longer than the last.
He wanted to pray. Wanted to beg whatever God might be listening to spare her, to take him instead, to do anything but leave him alone with a sick child and no idea how to survive.
But the words wouldn’t come.
They’d never come. Not when his own mother died. Not when Matthew caught the fever. Not even when Clara asked him directly. He could only sit and wait for it to be over.
Her breathing stopped just before dawn.
Matthew followed three days later.
And Rhett told himself he did everything he could. Everything a man should do. He tended them, kept them clean, tried every remedy the doctor suggested. He was practical, logical, strong.
But that wasn’t true.
The truth was simpler, sharper, harder to face.
He’d been terrified.
Terrified of his own helplessness. Terrified of speaking into the void and hearing nothing back. Terrified that if he tried to pray and God stayed silent, he’d have to admit he was completely, utterly alone. So he chose logic over faith.
And he was doing it again.
Right now, kneeling on Fiona’s floor, trying to reason with a magic he didn’t understand, he was making the same choice. Trying to control what couldn’t be controlled. Refusing to surrender to anything he couldn’t measure or predict.
Clara asked him for one thing. Just to sit with her in the dark and pray.
And he said no.
His throat closed. His vision blurred. The card trembled between his hands, but this time the shaking came from him, not magic.
He failed Clara. Failed Matthew.
He couldn’t fail Fiona and Jamie too.
Not when he’d been given this impossible second chance. Not when he finally let himself care again, let himself hope that maybe he wasn’t meant to spend the rest of his life alone wallowing in his guilt.
He had no more logic left. No more reasoning. No more practical solutions to try.
Just fear. And love. And the desperate, aching need to be with them.